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Instructions for authorsThis page includes information about preparing a manuscript for submission to PMC Physics A, criteria for publication and the online submission process. You are advised also to read About this journal, which includes other relevant information about the journal's policies, criteria for publication and descriptions of different article types, the refereeing process and so on. Presubmission enquiriesIf you wish to make a presubmission enquiry about the suitability of your manuscript, please email the editors, who will aim to respond to your enquiry within two working days. Criteria for publicationPMC Physics A publishes original research and reviews in the following areas.
PMC Physics A publishes:
Authors and referees are asked to declare any competing interests. Copyright for research articles rests with the authors. For more information on copyright of research articles, see our publisher's copyright and license policy. Submission processManuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The submitting author takes responsibility for the article during submission and peer review. Please note that PhysMath Central institutional membership is only recognized if the submitting author is from a BioMed Central member institution. To facilitate rapid publication and to minimize administrative costs, PMC Physics A accepts only online submission. The submission process is compatible with most modern web browsers, including Firefox. It can be used from PC, Mac, or Unix platforms. Files can be submitted as a batch, or one by one. The submission process can be interrupted at any time; when users return to the site, they can carry on where they left off. See below for examples of word processor and graphics file formats that can be accepted by the online submission system. Additional files of any type, such as movies, animations, or original data files, can also be submitted as part of the publication. During submission you will be asked to provide a cover letter. Use this to explain why your manuscript should be published in the journal, to elaborate on any issues relating to our editorial policies in the About this journal page, and to declare any potential competing interests. You will be able to provide the contact details (including email addresses) of potential peer reviewers for your manuscript. These should be experts in their field of study, who will be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Any suggested peer reviewers should not have published with any of the authors of the manuscript within the past five years, should not be current collaborators, and should not be members of the same research institution. Suggested reviewers will be considered alongside potential reviewers identified by the Editor-in-chief and/or Editorial Board members. Assistance with the process of manuscript preparation and submission is available from PhysMath Central's customer support team. We also provide a collection of links to useful tools and resources for scientific authors on our Tools for Authors page. Editorial policiesAny manuscripts, or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. The journal is willing to consider peer-reviewing manuscripts that are translations of articles originally published in another language. In this case, the consent of the journal in which the article was originally published must be obtained and the fact that the article has already been published must be made clear on submission and stated in the abstract. Further information on duplicate/overlapping publications can be found here. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.Preparing main manuscript textGeneral guidelines of the journal's style and language are given below. File formatsThe following word processor file formats are acceptable for the main manuscript document:
Users of other word processing packages should save or convert their files to RTF before uploading. Many free tools are available which ease this process. TeX/LaTeX users: We recommend using PhysMath Central's TeX template and BibTeX stylefile. If you use this standard format, you can submit your manuscript in TeX format (after you submit your TEX file, you will be prompted to submit your BBL file). If you have used another template for your manuscript, or if you do not wish to use BibTeX, then please submit your manuscript as a DVI file. We do not recommend converting to RTF. Note that figures must be submitted as separate image files, not as part of the submitted manuscript file. Overview of manuscript sections for Research articlesManuscripts for Research articles submitted to PMC Physics A should be divided into the following sections (in this order):
You can download a template (Mac and Windows compatible; Microsoft Word 98/2000) for your article. TeX/LaTeX users: We recommend using PhysMath Central's TeX template and BibTeX stylefile. Formatting individual manuscript sections for Research articlesTitle pageThe title page should list the title of the article, the full names, institutional addresses, and email addresses for all authors. The corresponding author should also be indicated. AbstractThe Abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 350 words and must have no subheadings. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract. Please use up to 3 PACS and/or MCS codes to describe the content of your article. The first code should be a general-level descriptor supplemented by 2 more specific codes. PACS is a trademark of the American Institue of Physics. MCS (Mathematics Classification Scheme) is administered by the American Mathematical Society. IntroductionThe Introduction section should be written in a way that is accessible to researchers without specialist knowledge in that area and must clearly state - and, if helpful, illustrate - the background to the research and its aims. The section should end with a brief statement of what is being reported in the article. MethodsThis section should provide sufficient information for an expert to judge the soundness of the research and for an interested reader to reproduce the results reported. Results and discussionThe results and discussion may be combined into a single section or presented separately. The Results and Discussion sections may also be broken into subsections with short, informative headings. ConclusionsThis should state clearly the main conclusions of the research and give a clear explanation of their importance and relevance. Summary illustrations may be included. AcknowledgementsPlease acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the study by making substantial contributions to conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who is not listed as an author. Please also acknowledge anyone who contributed materials essential for the study. Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section. Numbered Mathematical Equations or FormulaeShould you wish to number any mathematical equations or formulae in your article in order to refer to them in the text, then they should occur in a paragraph on their own and centred in the manuscript, with the identification number right aligned and within brackets. Numbering should be sequential 1, 2, 3 etc, with identification of the nature 2a, 2b etc also being allowed. ReferencesAll references, including URLs, must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text, followed by any in tables or legends. Each reference must have an individual reference number. Please avoid excessive referencing. If automatic numbering systems are used, the reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission. Only articles and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited; unpublished abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be included in the text and referred to as "unpublished observations" or "personal communications" giving the names of the involved researchers. Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited colleagues is the responsibility of the author. Any in press articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office. Examples of the PMC Physics A reference style are shown below. Please ensure that the reference style is followed precisely; if the references are not in the correct style they may have to be retyped and carefully proofread. All web links and URLs, including links to the authors own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, in the following format: HEPDATA Reaction Data Database [http://durpdg.dur.ac.uk/hepdata/reac.html]. PMC Physics A reference styleStyle files are available for use with popular bibliographic management software: Article within a journal [+ optional arXiv id] Article within a journal supplement In press article Article within conference proceedings Book chapter, or article within a book Whole issue of journal Whole conference proceedings Complete book Monograph or book in a series Book with institutional author PhD thesis Link / URL arXiv-only links (no journal publication) Formatting your manuscript using PMC TeX templateDownload PhysMath Central article template and documentation in your preferred archive format:
The template consists of a standard set of headings that make up a PMC Physics A research article manuscript, along with dummy fragments of body text. Follow these steps to create your manuscript in the standard format:
Preparing illustrations and figuresFigures should be provided as separate files. Each figure should comprise only a single file. There is no charge for the use of color figures. Please read our figure preparation guidelines for detailed instructions on maximising the quality of your figures. Figure formatsThe following file formats can be accepted:
Figure legendsAll figure legends should start with a single sentence that acts as the figures title. The figure legends should be included in the main manuscript text, immediately following the references, rather than being a part of the figure file. The following information should be provided, for each figure: Figure number (in sequence, using Arabic numerals - i.e. Figure 1, 2, 3 etc); short title of figure (maximum 15 words); detailed legend, up to 300 words, if possible. Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures or tables that have previously been published elsewhere. Preparing tablesEach table should be numbered and cited in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, 2, 3 etc.). Tables should also have a title (above the table) that summarizes the whole table; it should be no longer than 15 words. Detailed legends may then follow, but they should be concise. Tabular data provided as additional files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls) or comma separated values (.csv). As with all files, please use the standard file extensions. Preparing additional filesAlthough PMC Physics A does not restrict the length and quantity of data included in an article, there may still be occasions where an author wishes to provide data sets, tables, movie files, or other information as additional information. Since many weblinks and URLs rapidly become broken, PMC Physics A requires that all supplementary data are included as additional files rather than as a link to your own website. These files can be uploaded using the "Additional Material files" button in the manuscript submission tool. The maximum file size for additional files is 20 MB each, and files will be virus-scanned on submission. Additional files will be linked to the final published article in the form supplied by the author, but will not be displayed within the article. They will be made available in exactly the same form as originally provided by the authors. If additional material is provided, please list the following information in a separate section of the manuscript text, immediately following the tables (if any):
Additional files should be named "Additional file 1" and so on and should be referenced explicitly by file name within the body of the article, e.g. "An additional movie file shows this in more detail [see Additional file 1]". Additional file formatsIdeally, file formats for additional files should not be platform-specific, and should be viewable using free or widely available tools. The following are examples of suitable formats.
As with figure files, files should be given the standard file extensions. This is especially important for Macintosh users, since the Mac OS does not enforce the use of standard extensions. Please also make sure that each additional file is a single table, figure or movie (please do not upload linked worksheets or PDF files larger than one sheet). Mini-websitesSmall self-contained websites can be submitted as additional files, in such a way that they will be browsable from within the full text HTML version of the article. In order to do this, please follow these instructions:
Style and languageGeneralCurrently, PMC Physics A can only accept manuscripts written in English. Spelling should be US English or British English, but not a mixture. There is no explicit limit on the length of articles submitted, but authors are encouraged to be concise. There is also no restriction on the number of figures, tables or additional files that can be included with each article online. Figures and tables should be numbered in the order in which they are referred to in the text. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article. PMC Physics A will not edit submitted manuscripts for style or language; reviewers may advise rejection of a manuscript if it is compromised by grammatical errors. Authors are advised to write clearly and simply, and to have their article checked by colleagues before submission. In-house copyediting will be minimal. Non-native speakers of English may choose to make use of a copyediting service such as that provided by Manuscript Presentation Service, International Science Editing and English Manager Science Editing. PhysMath Central has no first-hand experience of these companies and takes no responsibility for the quality of their service. Help and advice on scientific writingThe abstract is one of the most important parts of a manuscript. For guidance, please visit our page on Writing titles and abstracts for scientific articles. Tim Albert has produced for BioMed Central a list of tips for writing a scientific manuscript. Typography
UnitsSI units should be used throughout (liter and molar are permitted, however). |
ISSN: 1754-0410 |
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